Yeah, but you could put this board into a HushPC case with a little love. It's designed to fit. That was my point...the original poster asked about fanless Pentium M's like it was a novelty, I was pointing out it was already done...and that you could probably put THIS new board into one of those boxes.
My point was also that a EPIA IS a striped PC. It's very useful, but not up to modern spec. Things like robotics, media centers, etc. need a fast modern board to run. But the only current Intel or AMD processor even close to an C3 is the P-M. A gereral purpose computer of recent vintage is useless for most hobbie apps...It's very difficult to run the current crop of "space heaters" on any kind of limited power source. Until recently, it was only available in notebooks or SBCs...not very useful for general hobbiest and greatly limiting it's potential. Hopefully AMD will do the same with Athlons after 64's arrive!
Ever notice how geek guys don't get any, but geek girls are almost legendary for being extremely kinky? All the "geek" girls I knew never seemed to have guy trouble, execept to many, and too desperate. That's probably why there are so few girl posters on slashdot
Look at mini-itx.com for what an epia can do. Particularly the HushPC. 100% fanless, they use a custom extra large heatsink/case side. With no hard drive, it becomes possible to make a current model PC [not striped version of 486] with zero moving parts perfect for terminals, employee workstations, ect.
What could you do with a PC if you didn't have to worry about airflow at all?
It's really a next gen P3 not a P4! It's a like P3 with support for 400MHz ram and other goodies every one wanted when the travisty of P4 came out. There's more to it than that, but it's a far more efficent processor than a P4---more ops at less MHz and watts.
Actually, it looks like they are building this board to qualify for a Centrino logo! This requires specific intel hardware all of which is in the demo photo. Unfortunately, this will cost a small fortune if you can even find it at retail. SBCs are horribly expensive, but do make allowances for extended/harsh environment [run with no fan at 120 degrees in the shade] needed for industry and public service. Think welded shut in a subway station or under a steel drop forge type apps.
Basicly it's an iPod with bluetooth. This would be benificial on a lot of levels...look how popular iPod has become for the same uses. After all, almost all women [mythical creatures to many/.ers] carry purses big enough for an iPod. Just toss the purse in the drawer next to the computer and she has access to all her personal email, accounts, etc. Most users connect to internet at work where bringing a Laptop is impractical, but still want to listen to their music, work on "home" work etc. at lunch. This way your music is yours, no need to upload to work computers. Personal docs stay personal when you're not at work.
It would make for cool public use computers! Just carry around a knoppix CD, personal server, and bluetooth adapter and any PC is your own personal setup. Note this can be done now with USB hard drives, but the wireless aspect [firewire, USB, and ethernet would work as well] lets you connect all the devices without fidgiting with lots of buttons. Snap pics with the phone-camera, save them on the little box, review meeting notes with your PDA on the train to work, etc.
Frankly, who would you trust more negotiations with? Bush a texas oil exec who mislead [was definately not forthwith with all the evidence or options] his entire country to start a war against a non-agressing nation, or Mr. Carter who could be livin' it up, but instead chooses to help the poor and try to keep your country from getting pummled?
Carter is concerned about North Korea and we all should be. The are out of economic resources. Their former families and countrymen to the south are "occupied" by the enemy and are full of resources enough for all of Korea. The North Koreans are approaching the point where they must fight or die! They have a million man [infantry not techies] army and all the food is on the other side of the boarder. Their leaders are dying for Bush to throw the first punch to spark a war...and he is cocky and arrogant enough to be goaded into giving it to them. Unlike Saddam, they want to start a fight, because they can make it really, really messy for us and maybe even win it. We need a committed peacemaker overthere, not someone worried about looking good for the next election!
If this was the GPL you'd all be singing a different tune. After all, what happens when the general public sees "free" software and starts moding and distributing for profit however they want. The FSF can't police them all after all. It's free, it's on their computers, why can't they do what ever they want?
If people were creating cards from scratch to decode private chanels that would be a different thing--true hacking. But this is people mearly cracking the legally protected encryption because they are too cheap to pay.
Let's change the items. If the electric Co disconnects your power, should you reconected it without paying...Water, cable? What about a grocery store. After all, they let you wander the aisles unsupervised, if they wanted there stuff "safe" they should lock it up better, right. How dare they search MY pockets...that's my privacy after all? Why can't I pull all the grass at the park up by it's roots? Dump barrels of used oil in my part of the local river? Let's hit you where you live. Why does your boss have to pay you every single week? After all, most people are employed at-will, maybe he didn't will to pay you for last week and forgot to tell you. Civilized society needs rules to operate! Just because there's a computer involved doesn't mean that all the normal civilized rules go out the window.
Also, the card belongs to the company. On the back of my Dish card it has something to the effect that the card and the software on the card are theirs. If you stop paying for the service, you're supposed to return the card to them as you are only "borrowing" it. Because part of the software is hardcoded to the card, you cannot reverse-engineer the smartcard--you have to use a cracked DSS card.
Perhaps the best thing for DirectTV would be to Schedule a 100% burn of every card in every machine for a 2-3 day period. Destroy them all! Then have the lawyers mail out the new cards after the paying subscribers sign a legal contract for accepting and returning the cards that has severe concequences for sharing or cracking the cards. Then see what happens. After day 30days they could call in all the markers issue new ones, and sue the hell out of anyone who "lost" theirs or returned a cracked one. That brute force effort may be the only way people learn. Much like the RIAA actually sending people to every Kazza PC and noting the files there then suing every single user. It's sheer brute force, but if these people got together they could really do some damage. Of course then everyone would realize that OSS and the like is a really good thing rather than cheating the system and hoping the owners look the other way.
DirectTV isn't presuing just generic smartcard writers. The customer records they are suing came from known illegetimate vendors. The readers were shipped with a blank or flashed eprom for the enablement of cracking DirectTV cards. They were also considerably cheaper than "professional" sanctioned units.
There may be a few hobbiests that get bit by this, but these customers were buying from places esentially advertizing using the tool for stealing DirectTV.
Unfortunately, the best outcome that can occur could be criminal charges filed against the customers. In my opinion that would be more fair for everyone involved. The FBI could then properly investigate and set some guidelines..perhaps confiscate the offending readers. People wouldn't be unnecessarily sued, but the guilty would be in a world of hurt...although the government is probably too slow to attempt such wide scale enforcement. Which is too bad because DirectTV is abusing the system to try and get some relief.
Yeah, but they are targeting customers of specific companies that sold Smart-Card busting material. While there's some grey-market about it, the readers were flashed with a rom to break DirectTV card encryption--these aren't generic writers.
They should be acting in a bit better faith, but why? They could offer to buy-back the offending writers rather than sue.. i.e. "give us the writer or then we sue you" but why bother. DirectTV piracy is rampant. I've had more than one "average joe" hear that I was into computers and ask if I fixed DirectTV cards--People just assume it, but they know it's wrong too.
I think frankly, they should get their own custom cards for new boxes, change the shape with a notch or holes, and arrange them so that non-directtv smart cards will be damaged by trying to trim them, and the new ones won't work in normal readers because of pinouts or extra tabs that have to be broken off and electrically damage the card. But that sill leaves lots of recievers out there old-style and people can't keep stealing their service. And it is stealing because to get the decode you had to sign up for the service and to follow the rules.
Lets see, Carter was the first elected President after the whole Nixon thing. Nixon was humiliated into resigning...not much to say about that execpt to stay out of jail. He's dead now. Ford was the Republican "fall guy" of the whole indicent and doesn't ever really get the credit he deserves for simply filling the chair after what Nixon and Co pulled. He's also dead.
Regan is a old man with "alzheimers". Again, he did a lot of good, but sill managed to willfully break the law--better keeping quiet. As well as his lacky (responsible for pulling off the whole Iran-Contra thing) Bush Sr. who also needs to keep quiet to avoid jail time for the incident.. and like republicans, spend their time and wealth on themselves! Clinton left the position with all sorts of personal problems (whitewater, Paula, Monica, etc) that again, he's better off shutting up to stay out of jail.
So realize that Carter can spout off all he wants. He's the only living american president not to have any reason to go to jail..that would seem to be pretty impressive. Also, the contacts that a president makes have huge weight in the rest of the world. Carter seems to be the only President to make anything of them. (OK, Nixon did help out in China. That had to take guts.)
He inherited a disgraced position after years of presidents that started wars and trampled on rights. He was the first president since FDR that didn't throw the country INTO a war and tried to end some of them.
With national security uses is the unclassified emails like the grocery list from your wife. Sure you may be blacknight62@gman.gov, but when you get[or send] an email to myhouse@myisp.com you're pretty much hosed!
How are secure mainframes for national security without any top secret data. Do the Aussies allow their public officals to play Quake on govt machines? Come on, everything is clasified because it leads to something else! Maybe it only had names and addresses of terrorists [better yet, just the non-terrorist on the "list"] on it. After all, that wouldn't be to secret...they should know who they are?
They can and do accept responsibility for their networks. Most Unis pay for site licenses of MS software so they can let students use it for cheap...I'd assume other companies make the same deals.
The idea of Quarantining users in a "update" sandbox sounds really cool. As long as the ISP can locally host the patches, it sounds like the perfect solution to the virus problem. I'd think we'll see virus scanning being included with ISPs in the very near future. Unfourtnately, MS is only interested in Monopoly, not fixing the problem. Most ISPs can't afford MS solution to the problem (i.e. pay MS lots of $$$ for expensive servers that still wipe out because MS can't keep up) Until Windows Update server API is untied from Windows servers (andd secret protocols, CALS, stupid patch changed EULAs, etc) it will always be a problem because no one will pay for "protection" for an insecure OS that should have been right to begin with.
Until Windows update can be written from scratch in PHP or Perl, and hosted on Linux without any other MS "restrictions" you'll continue to see the horrible virus problem. They're still trying to tie-in to the monopoly, it's about time they were forced to give it up for security!
Openoffice.org only writes vanilla PDFs. It can't add links or bookmarks, layers, & many of the cool features of full fleged acrobat. Also, it can't open PDF files. They aren't bothering Adobe at all.
Corpratists claim that corporations have property rights...that's the whole basis of corperate claims to any rights. But the stockholders give up their rights to a third party created by a paper. That third party has no democracy, rights, or constitution, it is a "foreign" government that makes decisisons for it's "serfs" without repersentation.
This has been fought a thousand times, in the middle ages, it was protection and fielty to a castle for saftey; in the colonial age, it was indentured servitude and the various "corporations" that settled north america then tried to hide behind "property" rights. [they had repersentation in their corporate masters parliment. we didn't buy that then.. or now] It's a shame our govenment has forgotten the reason it was founded...to resist corperate tyrany!
It comes down to the fact that while People have the right to property and such, corporations do not necessaraly inherit all those rights, after all, they have unnatural long life, and cannot be reasonably punished [after all, we don't lock up stockholders for MS behaviour...we probably should] as a normal individual....this makes them kind of like nobility...and as have a directive in the constitution to prevent that. You a citizen have rights over your property, when you create a government [what a corporation really is] then you must follow the US constitution which governs all governments on this soil. There's nothing "left-wing" about it.
How about a move to Quantum logic. Quantum logic would go back to atomic basics of absorbing and emmiting electrons. Doped silicon "flips" at exactly one point. It would be trivial to build multi-switch "transistors". The hard part would be figuring out what to do with them!
Again, you miss the point! I will not pay "hostage" money to MS to fix their problems. I don't have MS servers, and with Licensing 6.0, intend not to! MS has created a huge mess trying to sell other people access to your PC, and wants to sell you stuff to "fix" it. If security and piracy were such big concerns, they'd release the tools without any "strings" attached. Buying and MS server is a huge string!
Like I said, McAfee's updater is great, no strings attached just set the mirror and then all the others grab copies. That's how MS updates should be..Not just windows, but everything.
As far as Piracy, they still don't have a 100% tool for verifying software on your PC. You can't PROVE RIGHT NOW that any give PC is 100% compliant! I want to know right now what's on my PC...and push 1 button to find out. Seriously, I think they don't want you to know. Then all the stuff they sell other people wouldn't work. That's why nothing ever uninstalls properly! They don't even make a simple tool to print out what's on your PC.. for all they worry about Piracy, that could be gross neglegance. Again, they want software management, and for you to pay $$ for it. And, to threaten you with the BSA if you don't buy their tool.
I know I'm being harsh, but not really, if security and piracy are such a big deal, MS needs to put up or shut up! Like many people has said before, piracy mostly helps MS to maintain their monoploy while MS looks the other way..and leaves business open to license "blackmail" by employees, competitors, BSA. That's not proper business!
Again, I'd be happy if OSS woud at least work together to provide a "unified" choice to MS. I've been getting away from wanting OSS to have "just one Program", but it would be really nice if there were common file formats that were useful. [rtf & such don't count..they're 20 fricken years old! lets's get with the times] Sort of like MySql or PHP. They set such a standard on OSS that they were ported to windows...so you can learn OSS on windows, then switch!
The problem is it's not to broad a patent. I read this over at the Register friday, and the patent is really for a "magic" credit card. Like the American Express Blue card with a smart chip. The claims use "credit-card sized" so many times it's monotonous! Also, like with a smartcard, there is no allowance for entering information "on the card" that is supposedly done thru various readers/writers at your house, store, atm, etc. It looks like they added a bunch of claims later [toward the end] that have nothing to do with a credit-card size "computer" just to cover all the different posible small-computer options. It's supposed to be a secure card that stored numbers and Pins, but then they give a whole list of "other" storage options [floppies, HDD, ram chip, etc] that's what they're probably using to sue. It's nuts, and the first court was right on to shoot it down.
RTFA [i've always wanted to saythat] but seriously, they explained that the topology gains more performance from 100Mbs cards and switches than by simply getting "faster" stuff. They gain more performance from 3 normal 100Mbs cards than one would get from 1 Gbs card due to the time connections take to create and handle versus shareing the wire for multiple processes.
What's novel is that the same tech [crosslinking processors, etc.] that made the first crays so powerful can be emulated with cheap parts from your local store---that's huge!
Slavery-ha, If I was available [unfortunately I'm in michigan] I'd be there for free too! Besides college students have fewer rights than slaves--every one knows that...
They even have a tool on their site to help you wire it up! You can buy the hardware at any computer shop. Of course buying several hundred PC's at once and multiple switches takes a pretty heft credit limit! --Oh and you need to figure out how to power several hundred dual Athalon toaster ovens from your meger 200 amp service! But no one's stopping you. I think I'd be cool to do this to an office of PCs. After all an extra $50 per PC for a hobby project might get by the PHB.
What would it take for someone to write import/export filters for common OSS programs? i.e. abiword, gnumeric, OpenOffice.org, etc. Then users could send OSS attachemnts to Windows users, and have the Windows users download the filters. More over, it would allow a shop to have the Windows machines to be the "bastards" rather than the Linux boxes, but still function.
Also, how about some integration of OSS programs! The GNUs, K's, and OO.orgs office programs should all be able to read and write each other's native formats when possible. The current amount of division is silly and childish. There have developed 3 seperate-but-equal Linux "paths". The GNU, KDE, & Alt [mozilla/oo.org/etc] There should be an attempt make to keep things talking between the paths. i.e. files created with gnumeric/abiword should be equaly readable with Kword/Kalc & OO.org.
I'd like to see more integration of standard OSS scripting languages in Linux "Office" programs. I've lately fell in love with PHP and some of the cool variations particularly PHP-GTK. All the goodnes of two OSS projects together. It basicly acts like a mini-VB. Anyway, I digress. Why does everyone try to implement their own "scripting" language for every program? With Perl, Python, PHP, Java, & JavaScript [hey, everyone has access to them sillies] why won't more people use them as the scripting tools for their languages. Sure, they may not be the absolute best for your project, but adding simple connectivity [to everything else web related silly!] to lots of other stuff people already know would really help these projects out.
After all, when you learn Linux, you already have to learn Shell, Perl, PHP, etc. [non-MS stuff] just to keep UP and be useful why make every single app do it's own thing rather than build soms synergy between them. I don't think Linux needs a VB clone. MS has already killed it. RIP VB!
The problem with the paper licenses is that the BSA checks by looking at exe, reg keys, dlls, etc. Unless you wipe the PC you can't uninstall ALL the pieces of the software and you're in violation! What MS doesn't make is a utility to simply print out all the software you have installed on the PC [I'd be happy with single PC auditing], and remove all traces of what you don't want. Remember, if you miss a piece you can be in violation, think about how gator works in secret and things get really scarry.
My gripe for the week is MS control. Again,s here you have another situation where MS threatens you with damage to your business unless you "comply" with potential BSA audits, and is using those poorly-veiled threats to get you to give up rights for "protection".
Weather it's the bend-over ELA's [not benificial for my company] or buying lots of "new & improved" [with horrible EULA changes] versions of it's OS with expensive servers. Release a free and clear tool for me to be "piracy free" that will tell me what's installed and what needs licenses--so I can document them, and I'll be happilly compliant. Like Ernie Ball though...Don't stand there and blackmail me by making "threats" and impossiblly complicated usage agreements. That's the racket their in, and they know it!
Slashdot Mirror
My point was also that a EPIA IS a striped PC. It's very useful, but not up to modern spec. Things like robotics, media centers, etc. need a fast modern board to run. But the only current Intel or AMD processor even close to an C3 is the P-M. A gereral purpose computer of recent vintage is useless for most hobbie apps...It's very difficult to run the current crop of "space heaters" on any kind of limited power source. Until recently, it was only available in notebooks or SBCs...not very useful for general hobbiest and greatly limiting it's potential. Hopefully AMD will do the same with Athlons after 64's arrive!
Ever notice how geek guys don't get any, but geek girls are almost legendary for being extremely kinky? All the "geek" girls I knew never seemed to have guy trouble, execept to many, and too desperate. That's probably why there are so few girl posters on slashdot
What could you do with a PC if you didn't have to worry about airflow at all?
Actually, it looks like they are building this board to qualify for a Centrino logo! This requires specific intel hardware all of which is in the demo photo. Unfortunately, this will cost a small fortune if you can even find it at retail. SBCs are horribly expensive, but do make allowances for extended/harsh environment [run with no fan at 120 degrees in the shade] needed for industry and public service. Think welded shut in a subway station or under a steel drop forge type apps.
It would make for cool public use computers! Just carry around a knoppix CD, personal server, and bluetooth adapter and any PC is your own personal setup. Note this can be done now with USB hard drives, but the wireless aspect [firewire, USB, and ethernet would work as well] lets you connect all the devices without fidgiting with lots of buttons. Snap pics with the phone-camera, save them on the little box, review meeting notes with your PDA on the train to work, etc.
Carter is concerned about North Korea and we all should be. The are out of economic resources. Their former families and countrymen to the south are "occupied" by the enemy and are full of resources enough for all of Korea. The North Koreans are approaching the point where they must fight or die! They have a million man [infantry not techies] army and all the food is on the other side of the boarder. Their leaders are dying for Bush to throw the first punch to spark a war...and he is cocky and arrogant enough to be goaded into giving it to them. Unlike Saddam, they want to start a fight, because they can make it really, really messy for us and maybe even win it. We need a committed peacemaker overthere, not someone worried about looking good for the next election!
If people were creating cards from scratch to decode private chanels that would be a different thing--true hacking. But this is people mearly cracking the legally protected encryption because they are too cheap to pay.
Let's change the items. If the electric Co disconnects your power, should you reconected it without paying...Water, cable? What about a grocery store. After all, they let you wander the aisles unsupervised, if they wanted there stuff "safe" they should lock it up better, right. How dare they search MY pockets...that's my privacy after all? Why can't I pull all the grass at the park up by it's roots? Dump barrels of used oil in my part of the local river? Let's hit you where you live. Why does your boss have to pay you every single week? After all, most people are employed at-will, maybe he didn't will to pay you for last week and forgot to tell you. Civilized society needs rules to operate! Just because there's a computer involved doesn't mean that all the normal civilized rules go out the window.
Also, the card belongs to the company. On the back of my Dish card it has something to the effect that the card and the software on the card are theirs. If you stop paying for the service, you're supposed to return the card to them as you are only "borrowing" it. Because part of the software is hardcoded to the card, you cannot reverse-engineer the smartcard--you have to use a cracked DSS card.
Perhaps the best thing for DirectTV would be to Schedule a 100% burn of every card in every machine for a 2-3 day period. Destroy them all! Then have the lawyers mail out the new cards after the paying subscribers sign a legal contract for accepting and returning the cards that has severe concequences for sharing or cracking the cards. Then see what happens. After day 30days they could call in all the markers issue new ones, and sue the hell out of anyone who "lost" theirs or returned a cracked one. That brute force effort may be the only way people learn. Much like the RIAA actually sending people to every Kazza PC and noting the files there then suing every single user. It's sheer brute force, but if these people got together they could really do some damage. Of course then everyone would realize that OSS and the like is a really good thing rather than cheating the system and hoping the owners look the other way.
There may be a few hobbiests that get bit by this, but these customers were buying from places esentially advertizing using the tool for stealing DirectTV.
Unfortunately, the best outcome that can occur could be criminal charges filed against the customers. In my opinion that would be more fair for everyone involved. The FBI could then properly investigate and set some guidelines..perhaps confiscate the offending readers. People wouldn't be unnecessarily sued, but the guilty would be in a world of hurt...although the government is probably too slow to attempt such wide scale enforcement. Which is too bad because DirectTV is abusing the system to try and get some relief.
They should be acting in a bit better faith, but why? They could offer to buy-back the offending writers rather than sue.. i.e. "give us the writer or then we sue you" but why bother. DirectTV piracy is rampant. I've had more than one "average joe" hear that I was into computers and ask if I fixed DirectTV cards--People just assume it, but they know it's wrong too.
I think frankly, they should get their own custom cards for new boxes, change the shape with a notch or holes, and arrange them so that non-directtv smart cards will be damaged by trying to trim them, and the new ones won't work in normal readers because of pinouts or extra tabs that have to be broken off and electrically damage the card. But that sill leaves lots of recievers out there old-style and people can't keep stealing their service. And it is stealing because to get the decode you had to sign up for the service and to follow the rules.
Regan is a old man with "alzheimers". Again, he did a lot of good, but sill managed to willfully break the law--better keeping quiet. As well as his lacky (responsible for pulling off the whole Iran-Contra thing) Bush Sr. who also needs to keep quiet to avoid jail time for the incident.. and like republicans, spend their time and wealth on themselves! Clinton left the position with all sorts of personal problems (whitewater, Paula, Monica, etc) that again, he's better off shutting up to stay out of jail.
So realize that Carter can spout off all he wants. He's the only living american president not to have any reason to go to jail..that would seem to be pretty impressive. Also, the contacts that a president makes have huge weight in the rest of the world. Carter seems to be the only President to make anything of them. (OK, Nixon did help out in China. That had to take guts.)
He inherited a disgraced position after years of presidents that started wars and trampled on rights. He was the first president since FDR that didn't throw the country INTO a war and tried to end some of them.
How are secure mainframes for national security without any top secret data. Do the Aussies allow their public officals to play Quake on govt machines? Come on, everything is clasified because it leads to something else! Maybe it only had names and addresses of terrorists [better yet, just the non-terrorist on the "list"] on it. After all, that wouldn't be to secret...they should know who they are?
The idea of Quarantining users in a "update" sandbox sounds really cool. As long as the ISP can locally host the patches, it sounds like the perfect solution to the virus problem. I'd think we'll see virus scanning being included with ISPs in the very near future. Unfourtnately, MS is only interested in Monopoly, not fixing the problem. Most ISPs can't afford MS solution to the problem (i.e. pay MS lots of $$$ for expensive servers that still wipe out because MS can't keep up) Until Windows Update server API is untied from Windows servers (andd secret protocols, CALS, stupid patch changed EULAs, etc) it will always be a problem because no one will pay for "protection" for an insecure OS that should have been right to begin with.
Until Windows update can be written from scratch in PHP or Perl, and hosted on Linux without any other MS "restrictions" you'll continue to see the horrible virus problem. They're still trying to tie-in to the monopoly, it's about time they were forced to give it up for security!
Openoffice.org only writes vanilla PDFs. It can't add links or bookmarks, layers, & many of the cool features of full fleged acrobat. Also, it can't open PDF files. They aren't bothering Adobe at all.
This has been fought a thousand times, in the middle ages, it was protection and fielty to a castle for saftey; in the colonial age, it was indentured servitude and the various "corporations" that settled north america then tried to hide behind "property" rights. [they had repersentation in their corporate masters parliment. we didn't buy that then.. or now] It's a shame our govenment has forgotten the reason it was founded...to resist corperate tyrany!
It comes down to the fact that while People have the right to property and such, corporations do not necessaraly inherit all those rights, after all, they have unnatural long life, and cannot be reasonably punished [after all, we don't lock up stockholders for MS behaviour...we probably should] as a normal individual....this makes them kind of like nobility...and as have a directive in the constitution to prevent that. You a citizen have rights over your property, when you create a government [what a corporation really is] then you must follow the US constitution which governs all governments on this soil. There's nothing "left-wing" about it.
How about a move to Quantum logic. Quantum logic would go back to atomic basics of absorbing and emmiting electrons. Doped silicon "flips" at exactly one point. It would be trivial to build multi-switch "transistors". The hard part would be figuring out what to do with them!
Like I said, McAfee's updater is great, no strings attached just set the mirror and then all the others grab copies. That's how MS updates should be..Not just windows, but everything.
As far as Piracy, they still don't have a 100% tool for verifying software on your PC. You can't PROVE RIGHT NOW that any give PC is 100% compliant! I want to know right now what's on my PC...and push 1 button to find out. Seriously, I think they don't want you to know. Then all the stuff they sell other people wouldn't work. That's why nothing ever uninstalls properly! They don't even make a simple tool to print out what's on your PC.. for all they worry about Piracy, that could be gross neglegance. Again, they want software management, and for you to pay $$ for it. And, to threaten you with the BSA if you don't buy their tool.
I know I'm being harsh, but not really, if security and piracy are such a big deal, MS needs to put up or shut up! Like many people has said before, piracy mostly helps MS to maintain their monoploy while MS looks the other way..and leaves business open to license "blackmail" by employees, competitors, BSA. That's not proper business!
Again, I'd be happy if OSS woud at least work together to provide a "unified" choice to MS. I've been getting away from wanting OSS to have "just one Program", but it would be really nice if there were common file formats that were useful. [rtf & such don't count..they're 20 fricken years old! lets's get with the times] Sort of like MySql or PHP. They set such a standard on OSS that they were ported to windows...so you can learn OSS on windows, then switch!
Sounds like if they win apple can sue them for a cut of their winnings...I'm sure Apple has patents on the newton!
The problem is it's not to broad a patent. I read this over at the Register friday, and the patent is really for a "magic" credit card. Like the American Express Blue card with a smart chip. The claims use "credit-card sized" so many times it's monotonous! Also, like with a smartcard, there is no allowance for entering information "on the card" that is supposedly done thru various readers/writers at your house, store, atm, etc. It looks like they added a bunch of claims later [toward the end] that have nothing to do with a credit-card size "computer" just to cover all the different posible small-computer options. It's supposed to be a secure card that stored numbers and Pins, but then they give a whole list of "other" storage options [floppies, HDD, ram chip, etc] that's what they're probably using to sue. It's nuts, and the first court was right on to shoot it down.
What's novel is that the same tech [crosslinking processors, etc.] that made the first crays so powerful can be emulated with cheap parts from your local store---that's huge!
we worship thee!
Slavery-ha, If I was available [unfortunately I'm in michigan] I'd be there for free too! Besides college students have fewer rights than slaves--every one knows that...
They even have a tool on their site to help you wire it up! You can buy the hardware at any computer shop. Of course buying several hundred PC's at once and multiple switches takes a pretty heft credit limit! --Oh and you need to figure out how to power several hundred dual Athalon toaster ovens from your meger 200 amp service! But no one's stopping you. I think I'd be cool to do this to an office of PCs. After all an extra $50 per PC for a hobby project might get by the PHB.
Also, how about some integration of OSS programs! The GNUs, K's, and OO.orgs office programs should all be able to read and write each other's native formats when possible. The current amount of division is silly and childish. There have developed 3 seperate-but-equal Linux "paths". The GNU, KDE, & Alt [mozilla/oo.org/etc] There should be an attempt make to keep things talking between the paths. i.e. files created with gnumeric/abiword should be equaly readable with Kword/Kalc & OO.org.
After all, when you learn Linux, you already have to learn Shell, Perl, PHP, etc. [non-MS stuff] just to keep UP and be useful why make every single app do it's own thing rather than build soms synergy between them. I don't think Linux needs a VB clone. MS has already killed it. RIP VB!
My gripe for the week is MS control. Again,s here you have another situation where MS threatens you with damage to your business unless you "comply" with potential BSA audits, and is using those poorly-veiled threats to get you to give up rights for "protection".
Weather it's the bend-over ELA's [not benificial for my company] or buying lots of "new & improved" [with horrible EULA changes] versions of it's OS with expensive servers. Release a free and clear tool for me to be "piracy free" that will tell me what's installed and what needs licenses--so I can document them, and I'll be happilly compliant. Like Ernie Ball though...Don't stand there and blackmail me by making "threats" and impossiblly complicated usage agreements. That's the racket their in, and they know it!